@Yan Wong: I select unreviewed images as exemplars regularly. I like to think that the added visibility gets some of them noticed by curators and Trusted, too, but I haven't checked. A collection is a good idea, but I wonder if a "best Unreviewed images on EOL" collection would be more useful than an Untrusted exemplar collection. That way any member could help point out great images in need of Trusting...

@Cyndy Parr: I certainly wouldn't trust an image if I wasn't sure of the ID, simply to make it "rise to the top". I wonder if a good use of review time for EoL interns (or whoever) would be to look through all images deliberately set by a curator as an exemplar but which are unreviewed. There can't be that many of them, and I assume they are cases where a suitable reviewed image is poor. It might be useful if there was an automatically generated collection of these.

@Yan Wong: My opinion is that it is okay, especially for species that will have images that are almost impossible to trust. I'd rather see an exemplar marked as unreviewed, than trusted just to justify it as an exemplar, if that makes sense. Here's an example: http://eol.org/pages/311512/ The 2 trusted images are not very high quality, and an unreviewed image is much better and looks very much like the trusted images.

Is it OK to pick unreviewed images as exemplars? For example, the only actual picture (rather than drawing) of human fleas is a microscope photo (by an EoL regular, as it happens), but it is not yet trusted: http://eol.org/pages/704391/media

@Michаel Frаnkis: Michael and Kate - I'm reluctant to make blanket statements, but I can safely say that you and other curators should always exercise your best judgment when choosing photos. Where a choice exists, I would invite you to choose a photo that embraces both scientific accuracy and aesthetic quality. Per Michael's comment in para3, this is information we would very much like to see associated with taxon pages - let's talk about the best way to do that. ***As always, thanks for everything you do for EOL***

I'd say we should select known wild origin, 100% of the time. Species in captivity / cultivation are frequently hybrids, or misidentified, often atypical, and do not show the taxon in its natural environment. Even where the species (as currently defined) may be obvious, subspecies usually won't be known; this leads to problems with time as subspecies are shown by further research to be distinct species, and the photos change from 'species identified' to 'unidentified'.

Case in point: the Ptilopsis owls of Africa. These were formerly regarded as a single species, Ptilopsis leucotis, but this was recently split into two species, Ptilopsis leucotis in the northern subtropics, and Ptilopsis granti in the southern subtropics. The two species are easily identified in the wild by location and vocally, but are visually indistinguishable. Ptilopsis owls are common in captivity, and most are labelled Ptilopsis leucotis, though many (most?) of them are actually likely to be Ptilopsis granti due to its greater accessibility to markets. So captive specimens of Ptilopsis are not identifiable, and quite simply can't be trusted.

To draw a similar parallel, directly relevant to what you say: we have a few photos from the wild of Ailurus fulgens which are of mediocre photographic quality (camera trap results), and dozens of photos from zoos, many of high photographic quality. But not one of the zoo photos is identified to either source location or to subspecies (A. f. fulgens in the Himalaya, A. f. styani in SW China). If future research shows a deep genetic divide between the two subspecies (or even between other as-yet un-named populations) and thus a species split (very possible, even likely, given the barriers to migration in the deep valleys of the area), then every single one of those zoo photos becomes worthless as just unidentified Ailurus sp. (as they already are unidentifiable to subspecies), and might as well be deleted.

This can even affect species which one might think to be no-brainer identifications: how many captive specimens of Loxodonta africana might actually turn out to be Loxodonta cyclotis misnamed? Answer: probably not many, but we don't, and effectively can't, know precisely.

I have a question concerning choosing exemplar photos. I know EOL values photos of the species in the wild vs photos of the species in captivity. I'd say 85-95% of the time, this completely makes sense. But I've come across a few pages/collections of photos where there is a limited number of photos taken in the wild, those photos aren't great (far away, species is partially obstructed from view, etc), and the photos of the species in captivity are of much better quality, meaning I can immediately identify the animal, I see distinguishing physical traits, and so forth. Is it acceptable to select those photos as exemplar? Or should we stick to the wild ones? My thought is, if the photo is a much better example of the species, and assuming that not all viewers look through the photos available, it might be a good idea to use photos of the animal in captivity in these cases.

@Michаel Frаnkis: Michael and Yan - we're on the case. Thanks for the very comprehensive description of the problem. We take curation issues very seriously, and will look to come up with a useful approach to addressing this problem. Thanks - bob

@Yan Wong: Hi Yan - I've frequently noticed things like this disappearing; I've also likewise repeatedly having to untrust some erroneous vernacular names, but they keep on reappearing as 'trusted' a few days later. In at least some of the cases the erroneous names are coming from ITIS (long noted as full of errors!), and appear to be re-trusted with each update from ITIS. I'd suggest that data from ITIS (particularly vernacular names) should be auto-tagged as 'unreviewed' rather than automatically trusted.

Same too about exemplar images, many of the ones I've set are no longer so set, with no record of any other curator having changed to a new pic. Having said that, we do have better Spilopelia senegalensis pics than the one you chose, which isn't very high resolution - there's certainly far better on Wiki Commons, which will be on EoL probably awaiting curation (I'll go through later tonight).

The following image (which just appeared in the "march of life") seems to have lost the "hidden" flag imposed by a curator 4 months ago. Any idea what's going on? Are the EoL servers losing track of some of this curation activity? http://eol.org/data_objects/19177664

(additional comment: it seems as if some of the exemplar settings are being lost too. I've just had to reset http://eol.org/data_objects/25803884 as an exemplar for the species, even though it was previously selected by 2 other curators as the species exemplar. Until a few minutes ago, http://eol.org/data_objects/26390484 was showing as the exemplar for this species, even though no curators specifically chose it to be so)